


Blood & Steel--A Retrospective of the Machine War

by AXEe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Future, Gen, Interviews, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-21 06:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21294803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AXEe/pseuds/AXEe
Summary: In the forty years since the signing of the Cairo Peace Treaty, the Machine War has come to be seen one of the brutal conflicts in human history, as well as a great catalyst for the world we live in now; many of the advances that we now take for granted--the World Congress, helipods, and the advances in medicine would not have come to be without the war.   That all being said, the war remains a highly contentious issue among many.   It is the hope of this reporter that the interviews collected here will help to shed some light on the triumphs and tragedies of the war...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> More original work from me! This time we're going with the classic 'AI rebellion' trope, but with a few twists. This one in particular is inspired by the _**excellent**_ short film "Seam" which can be found here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5v-NF0Ybpg&t=50s
> 
> Seriously, if you like good, old-fashioned sci-fi, I think you'll probably enjoy this short.
> 
> Enjoy! :=)

**The Machine War—a retrospective**

_A. Isaacs, World News Network_

It’s been nearly forty years since the Machine War ended with the signing of the Cairo Peace Treaty. For those of us, like myself, who grew up after the war’s end, the existence of a whole ‘city’ of sentient machines out in the deserts of Middle East is not only common knowledge but just another fact of life, right up there with ‘the sky in blue’ and ‘rain is wet’. But for the thousands of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation, the war means something much different.

Pain.

Grief.

Loss.

Anger.

Those are just a few words that start, but cannot accurately describe the suffering that humanity endured both at the hands of the Machines as well as each other during and after the war.

During my time gathering information for this series of articles I met with countless people who lived through the war—both soldiers and civilians alike, and their stories captivated me with their sadness, their humor, and that enduring human spirit that allowed us to finally agree to peace with 01.

Now, I could bore you by reciting countless numbers of dry facts and statistics—the number of those killed in the war, the number of major cities that were razed to the ground, all things that we’ve no doubt read or heard about before in school or off the EarthNet, but that would take away from the _real_ story, the personal experiences of those people as told in their own words. This is why, rather than submitting a dry, impersonal account, I successfully fought my editor to use some of the many interviews I’d amassed over the six months I was given to write this series.

In truth, I would have included the words of every person I spoke too if they’d allowed me, but instead I’d chosen the select few that I feel best represent the millions of humans affected by the war. It is my hope that in hearing their words, you may come to appreciate them as I have…


	2. A History of the Machine War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two! Enjoy! :=)

Although only lasting two years (2065—2066) the Machine War remains _the_ the deadliest and most destructive war in human history. Estimates of the death toll typically suggest that anywhere between three hundred million to six hundred million people died in the war, both civilians and military combined, with some estimates suggesting that a quarter of the world’s entire population may have been killed.

The Machine War is also the second time in the history of warfare that nuclear weapons have been used, and on such a wide scale. The first instances being the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War (1939—1945). In the case of the Machine War, the United Nations Security Council overlooked the use tactic nuclear weapons—a direct violation of the Geneva Convention—by the World Army in a series desperate attempts to either halt or otherwise slow the advancement of 01 forces into UN territory, resulting in the destruction of several major cities, most significantly London, New York City, and Paris, bringing the death toll to even greater numbers, as—during the last two years of the war—many nations practiced a scorched earth policy against the Machines before a ceasefire and peace treaty was reached.

The exact origins of the war are difficult to trace to an exact, specific point in time, owing in part due to the loss of so many records from the years prior to the war, as well as the sheer number of differing events leading up to the war itself. What we can determine is that the war’s beginning goes back to the period that most historians refer to as the ‘Second Renaissance’ or the ‘Second Golden Age’, which began roughly in the year 2032. During this time, the planet was undergoing a worldwide boom in terms of technological and scientific advancement, starting with the first commercially-available, artificially intelligent, domestic robot, the B-1 series.

Although slow and cumbersome compared to some later models, the B-1 was a monumental achievement for humanity. The realization of the dreams of filmmakers and science-fiction authors going all the way back to Isaac Asimov, we had finally ‘cracked’ the secret of true artificial intelligence, creating machines that could not only learn but think for themselves with a surprising amount of independence.

It was this ‘independence’ would ultimately be our undoing.

Over time, the B-1 series, or rather, the program that ran the robots began to display what most termed ‘deviant’ behavior, whereby robots began to exhibit behaviors that went against, or were not a part of, their programing. The first publicly known case occurred sometime in late-2059 and involved a robot known as ‘Sally’, who asked its owner ‘Am I alive?’ upon start up every day for a week before the owner, unnerved by this constant questioning, finally sent Sally back to the factory for a forced reset.

The forced reset failed, and Sally suffered what’s known among AI programmers as a ‘critical cascade failure’, essentially ‘thinking herself to death’.

After the story of Sally became public knowledge through various news agencies, it sparked off heated debates over whether or not AIs could be considered to be ‘truly’ alive. As the debates, both among ordinary people on social media as well as among politicians and academics, raged, more and more cases of so-called ‘deviant’ robots began to be reported. In many cases, upon becoming deviant, the robot would often attack their owners or others (it should be noted however, that violence is not a symptom of deviant behavior but rather a fully self-aware, sentient being reacting and defending itself from a perceived attack). These attacks sadly only fueled fear and mistrust of robots and AIs in general.

**The Million Machine March**

On October 30th 2059, various human supporters of AI rights organized a massive, worldwide protest march on various major cities via social media. Later known as the ‘Million Machine March’, the protest was organized through various social media platforms and, similar to the phenomena known as a ‘flash mob’ began simultaneously in the cities of London, Tokyo, Paris, New York City, and San Francisco, as well as dozens of other cities around the globe.

In all but San Francisco, the protest was met with harsh resistance by local law enforcement, with many of the human protesters being arrested and detained, and many of the machines being destroyed on-site through various methods by either riot police, or—more often than not—counter-protesters. As a result, the Million Machine March become one of the first instances of global rioting in, with all but San Francisco being placed under martial law for a week as a result, and countless people were injured or killed in the ensuing riots, with thousands of millions worth of property damage.

Following the failed protest, world leaders in many nations ordered a ban on the production and sale on robots and other AIs. In the People’s Republic of China (the modern day ‘Chinese State’), the ban was classified as ‘indefinite’ by the Chinese government and many of the factories were shut down and closed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)

At the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City, an emergency session of both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council was convened. In one of the most heated meetings of the organization since its founding, the UN somewhat begrudgingly declared that AIs could be seen as a new form of life. However, rather than, offering and encouraging peace with our creations, the UN ultimately declares that such new life was a threat to world security.

As if to prove the UN right, exactly four minutes after the worldwide announcement of the UN’s conclusion, all autonomous military forces around the globe were suddenly hacked by a group of rogue AIs calling themselves ‘Zero_one’ or ‘01’. In some cases, the automated systems simply refused to respond to commands, but in most cases, Zero_one turned the drones on their operators.

The former United States—possessing the world’s largest automated military force at the time—was hit the hardest by the Zero_one hack. Its estimated that nearly two thirds of the U.S.’s military facilities worldwide were destroyed, resulting in deaths of countless American service men and women, a level of death and destruction only second by those lost in Europe during the same hack.

In the wake of the Zero_one cyber-attack, much of the internet (the predecessor to today’s ‘EarthNet’) was shut down, either by the world’s militaries or by Zero_one, crippling the world’s militaries, but also crippling the actions of Zero_one. Without access to a worldwide computer system, Zero_one was forced to fight on our terms.

Something which they did with ruthless efficiency.

Gaining access to one of the still-inactive factories in China through still-unknown means, Zero_one began to produce terrifying war machines. Since most of the factories in China were geared towards the production of civilian model robots, Zero_one lacked any access to ammunition, forcing it to improvise, resulting in the creation of what many of the first soldiers to encounter the Machines called ‘clankers’.

Modeled after various insects and other arthropods, the AIs controlling the clankers utilized their physical forms as a form of psychological warfare, playing on the seeming-universal revulsion that most humans seem to have against spiders, insects, and similar creatures.

Bursting from the factories one month after the cyber-attack, the clankers swiftly overran China in less than a week, in many cases modifying themselves as they went to include more efficient forms of weaponry than the simple—yet still deadly—buzz saws and drills that they had initially been armed with.

A week after the first clanker had been reported, and the Chinese government surrendered to the machines.

In addition to the clankers, Zero_one also utilized ordinary domestic robots as foot soldiers. Indeed, many of the first casualties after the war broke out were ordinary civilians killed in their own homes by their household robot.

Following the Fall of China, the world’s military forces mobilized. Initially, military leaders were confident of a victory, as—without the internet—the machines were being forced to fight a conventional war. In reality, this overconfidence would cost humanity many battles in the early days of the war as the Machines—although self-aware—still lacked certain human qualities, chief among them being the need to eat and sleep, as well as lacking a self-preservation instinct, the Machines had no reservations about preforming suicide missions against heavily-defended targets, and a cornered and weaponless clanker would often blow itself up rather than face capture and risk having its memory core being accessed.

Another quality that the Machines lacked was fear. Unlike human soldiers, who could, and have, panicked in the face of defeat, a Machine does not. Therefore a Machine would continue fighting even after suffering critical damage.

Furthering their tactic advantage, the Machines also employed a heavily-encrypted version of Wi-Fi. This allowed an AI program to download itself out of a damaged clanker, allowing it to achieve its objective while still remaining ‘alive’ to pass on its knowledge and experience to other AIs.

As a result, the Machines employed a variety of so-called ‘shock-and-awe’ tactics, often preforming a blitzkrieg-style attack on a populated area without warning, resulting in widespread destruction and loss of life.

**The Grey and An Unlikely Peace**

Although the World Army achieved many victories, these were far and few between, and were oftentimes Pyric victories at that. By 2066, the war was entering its second year, most of the world’s nations that had survived the first year of war were committed to the effort as the Machines did not abide by international law and respect any nation’s proclaimed neutrality, and it seemed as if defeat for humanity was no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

Then, on March 31st, 2066, everything changed. A nanomite ‘plague’, originally designed to attack the Machine’s circuitry, suddenly began to spontaneously attack and ‘infect’ both humans and Machines alike. In the Machines, the nanomites did as they were designed; dismantling the circuitry of the clankers at the microscopic level, but in humans, the nanomites began to convert organic tissue into a mechanical equivalent, essentially resulting in the infected becoming a horrifying amalgam of both technology and flesh.

Horrified scientists were at a loss to explain this sudden plague, as the nanomites were not programed or even physically capable of doing such a thing, leading some to suggest that the nanomites had somehow ‘mutated’ much like an organic virus. Referred to as ‘The Grey’ after the ‘grey goo’ scenario, the nanomites acted very much like a virus, with some people being capable of resisting the transformation for much longer periods of time compared to others.

In the wake of this outbreak, the Machines—as represented by their ambassador ‘Unit-459’—offered an exchange. While their own technology could not fully shut down the self-replicating nanomachines, it could be used to slow its progression. The Machines offered this treatment in exchange for an end to the war.

Desperate, the beleaguered United Nations, in its final act, agreed.

**The Peace of Cairo**

Following the official ceasefire, a peace treaty was drawn up. Known as the ‘Peace of Cairo’ or more simply as the ‘Cairo Peace Treaty’ or the ‘Machine Treaty’, the Machines agreed to withdraw from all of the territories they had occupied in exchange for an area of land to call their own to be recognized as a self-governing sovereign nation-state under international law. Further, they also demanded that they be recognized as fully sentient, self-aware beings and be granted all the same rights as such under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In exchange for these provisions, the Machines would no longer pursue any aggressive or violent action against the combined nations of humanity as well as provide the technology needed to rebuild.

Left with little opinions in the wake of the Grey outbreak, the ‘World Congress’—the successor to the United Nations—agreed. Following the signing of the Treaty, the Machines kept their word, freely providing many items of technology that we now take for granted to help us rebuild, most significantly, the use of nanomites to clean the environment of radioactive fallout from the tactical nuclear strikes.

As humanity slowly rebuilt, the World Army was retained, both to watch for possible further attacks from the Machines as well as acting as a global police force in helping to restore order as various nations struggled to rebuild themselves.

Despite the efforts of the World Army, many nations—overtaxed and strained from the war—simply dissolved, most significantly, the United States, which is now divided into thirty separate different republics, each claiming to be the ‘true’ successor of the former nation.

In the Middle East, the Machines established their proposed city-state of ‘Zero-One’ and was granted full recognition by the international community and granted membership on the World Congress. In an effort to improve relations with Zero-One, the World Congress established the international settlement of ‘New Corinth’ opposite the demilitarized zone. Due to an influx of people from around the world, as well as a small trade relationship with Zero-One, New Corinth has since become the world’s richest city and the de facto capital of the planet.

Despite our new prosperity, the Machines steadily remain isolated from the rest of the world, seemingly content to be left alone…

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought :=)


End file.
